Federal immigration authorities are crediting a crucial team effort with local law enforcement agencies nationwide for a substantial increase in the number of criminally convicted illegal aliens in the last year.

The Department of Homeland Security’s largest investigative agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), reports that agents assigned to find fugitives who have ignored deportation orders have increasingly apprehended illegal aliens with criminal records.

Nearly half of the 35,000 immigrants arrested by ICE during the 2009 fiscal year have been convicted of crimes in U.S. courts, according to the agency’s records. The figure marks an increase of 23% from the previous fiscal year and illustrates the operation’s success in ridding communities across the country of dangerous criminals who shouldn’t even be in the U.S.

ICE officials attribute the success to a closer working relationship with local police departments that notify immigration authorities when an illegal alien is arrested and help the feds develop leads. The local-federal partnership is known as 287(g) and is ardently opposed by Latino advocates who claim it instills fear in immigrant neighborhoods and gives local police a green light to commit racial profiling and civil rights abuses.

In fact, a few months ago a coalition of influential Latino and civil rights organizations demanded that the Obama Administration terminate the 287(g) program because it exacerbates racial profiling. In a stern two-page letter to the president the army of politically-connected immigrant rights groups said local law enforcement agencies nationwide are abusing the program to target communities of color.

Obama has caved in to the powerful La Raza movement by weakening 287(g) even though it has helped reduce violent crime in local communities and aided in the deportation of thousands of criminal illegal aliens who would otherwise fall through the cracks. To obtain details relating to the incomprehensible changes, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security because the agency has exceeded the deadline on a July public records request.